The art of online discounts — 5 easy-to-follow steps for the holiday season

Thanks to online shopping, we don’t have to brave crowded stores if we don’t want to. In addition to being convenient, it’s also really easy to save money when you shop online! I shared my five favorite ways to save while you shop with PIX11’s Dan Mannarino.

1. Your Research Assistant
As you shop online, Priceblink, which is a browser extension for Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer, will let you know if you’re getting the best price, or where a better price can be found at over 11,000 sites. It also looks for additional offers, like free shipping and allows you to track price history.

2. Holiday Shopping Basecamp
Instead of rifling through circulars and countless emails, try Slickdeals.net for all the best sales. They have dedicated Black Friday and Cyber Monday pages with interactive ad scans, and the best deals, which are voted on and vetted by their community of 10 million users, can be found on their home page. You can also set deal alerts for specific items, so you’ll be notified of deals as they become available.

3. Discounted Gift Cards
You can often sweeten a sale by shopping with a discounted gift card. Visit Gift Card Granny.com or their app to look for a discounted gift card for any retailer, which can save you between 2-30% on average by shopping with it. They have over 400,000 gift cards from over 1,000 stores!

4. No More FOMO
Fear of a better price elsewhere? Many retailers and credit cards offer price protection, but who has time to chase down price adjustments? Instead, try signing up for Earny, a service that seeks out refunds for you in the event of a price drop within 90 days. They take a small cut for their efforts, but they do all the work and you get money back. Earny covers over a dozen major credit cards and over 50 major retailers, like Target, Best Buy and Macy’s.

5. Connect With Retailers
Other easy ways to save are to sign up for emails or text alerts from your favorite retailers, follow them on Twitter or Facebook or download their app. You can also try IM’ing them to find out about exclusive offers or leaving an item in your cart for a day. You might receive an email discount!